


open your heart (and let me know you want me here)

by nutriscii



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: (very very light i promise), Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - College/University, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:02:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27326230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nutriscii/pseuds/nutriscii
Summary: Here is the thing. When he started making that list, he was never planning on his best friend checking pretty much all the boxes right off the bat.or; a childhood friends to lovers au
Relationships: Eliott Demaury/Lucas Lallemant
Comments: 17
Kudos: 166





	open your heart (and let me know you want me here)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dawnlus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnlus/gifts).



_1- Someone who makes me feel something. Butterflies and fireworks and all that shit._

He’s fifteen when it happens, and as most things it doesn’t look like much of a big deal at first. It’s a Wednesday afternoon, and although it should be a regular one like so many others, there’s something unique in the fact that he’s sitting on the navy-blue carpeted floor of his bedroom, trying to figure out a math problem, while Eliott is humming to himself and scrolling down his phone on his bed. The setting isn’t what makes it all new, and much less Eliott’s presence — he’s actually one of the very few constants of his life, ever since the Demaurys moved across the street about a million years ago.

What makes it all new, scary, a bit foreign, is that it’s the first time they hang out, since he told Eliott he liked boys. Which- Okay, coming out to Eliott was really not the problem, really, it never was. He wasn’t… He wasn’t _scared_ that Eliott would take it the wrong way, you know, he wasn’t scared that all of a sudden Eliott would start looking back at him with disgust, that’s not what it was about. He just… He just didn’t know how to word it out. When would be the right time, and if there would ever be one — but turns out there had been one. About a week ago, he and Eliott had been texting late at night, and when the conversation had drifted onto Lucille, more specifically Eliott’s lifelong crush on her — it’s not quite the truth, but two years feel a lot like two lifetimes when you think about it —, Eliott had jokingly suggested that Lucas should get himself someone too so they could go on double dates, once she finally agrees to acknowledge him.

(He doesn’t know why it’s taking her so long, and if he’s being honest, he’s a bit prejudiced against her because of this exact reason.)

Naturally, because old habits die hard, his first instinct had been to deflect. _I’m not 45 yet, double dates sound boring as fuck_ , he almost wrote back, but at the last second he had erased all the words and went for _Pretty sure I wouldn’t need you to make a fool of myself in front of my very hypothetical boyfriend_ instead. There had been a few agonizing minutes spent staring at the ceiling after that, phone turned screen down onto his mattress, while he nervously chewed onto his bottom lip with his stomach in knots; in the meantime, Eliott had flooded their conversation with offended texts, because _‘oh, so you just think you can keep me away from him??? That’s sweet’_ , and just like that, Lucas had felt like a weight had been lifted off his chest.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Eliott asks excitedly, jumping in a sitting position so fast it makes the bedsprings creaks loudly, and Lucas hums in response, still frowning at his math problem without bothering to look back. He loves Eliott, he really does, but that boy has about a million things crossing his mind at all times of the day (and night), so he’s long given up on the idea of giving him his undivided attention every single time something like this happens. “What would you want him to look like?”

Lucas’ hands hover over his equation result for a moment as he blankly stares at his page in confusion, but then he throws a look above his shoulder, and he finds Eliott expectantly looking at him. “What? Who?”

“Your hypothetical boyfriend,” Eliott supplies, his smile widening when Lucas huffs and shakes his head.

“Don’t you think I have better things to think about right now?”, he groans, his attention drifting back onto his homework. He feels like he’s been twisting his brain over this for hours, and it’s not like he can possibly ask Eliott anything on the matter, because he may be two years older, when it comes to math he’s about as useless as a glass hammer.

“Better than thinking about the man of your dreams?”, Eliott gasps, and Lucas is about to tell him that this is all becoming extra cheesy for something that has no actual basis whatsoever when he adds: “You can’t find him if you don’t have an idea of what you’re looking for.”

“Because he’s going to suddenly show up, out of nowhere, just because I started picturing… I don’t know, some abs and a vaguely undefined hair color?”, Lucas snorts. He doesn’t make a habit of asking Eliott to be serious, because well, it’s Eliott, he’s got his head in the clouds a fair share of the time, but, like, _come on._

But instead of picking his phone back up and moving onto another topic, one that doesn’t require Lucas’ participation at the very least, Eliott lets out an appreciative noise. “So you _are_ picturing something, good start. Abs and… what’s the hair color again?”

Naturally, Lucas ends up smacking Eliott with his textbook — or at least trying to, because despite Eliott professing a lifelong hatred of sports of most, if not all kinds, he’s surprisingly quick and agile like a giant cat —, and, _eventually_ , his idiot best friend agrees to leave it at that. Which would have been terrific, really, if his brain had agreed to do the same.

But later, much later, when it’s already dark outside and Eliott has been gone for hours, he finds himself thinking about it — that stupid, _stupid_ idea. He can’t help but wonder, what if he’s right? What if he never finds anyone because he just doesn’t know what he’s looking for? Eliott has been crushing on Lucille for two years, but Lucas can’t even remember ever crushing on anyone. There’s never been anyone who made his stomach flutter, who made his mind go blank, who made his thoughts swirl around. There’s never been anyone who made his knees go weak, or turned his stomach to mush.

And maybe, as he keeps thinking about all the feelings everyone always talks about that he never got to experience, maybe that’s when he starts making it — maybe a couple of yearning thoughts are already the beginning of a list.

*

_9- Someone who gives a shit_

“How do they fit?” Eliott shouts from behind the bathroom door, and before Lucas has the time to reply he immediately adds, speech rate quickening like the words are tumbling down from his lips: “Because I’m pretty sure I can find something else.”

Lucas throws a glance at his sad reflection in the mirror, catching sight of the tee-shirt falling down mid-thighs and the shorts reaching below his knees; clearly not his best look, he thinks halfheartedly, flattening a couple of strands sticking up at weird angles at the back of his head. It’s only because he doesn’t want his best friend to take the door down that he ends up unlocking the door and stepping out of the bathroom.

“It’s fine, that will do,” Lucas mumbles, because honestly, he’s already crashing at the Demaurys’, it’s not like he can afford to be picky at the moment.

Eliott is standing in the doorway of his bedroom, and he gives him a sympathetic look — warm and gentle, honey-like in sweetness if not in color. “Good,” he nods, a nice smile stretching out on his lips as he slips into his bedroom.

Lucas follows him, shutting the door behind himself. Eliott vaguely smooths his comforter before climbing onto his bed. “What do you want to watch?”

Lucas twists his mouth a little, and for a moment he feels a bit lost without quite being able to tell why. He’s standing in this room he knows by heart, but still, it feels weird and alien. He uncomfortably rubs an invisible spot on his arm as he tries to process what’s different about it all. They’ve done that hundreds of times, he’s spent some of the best afternoons of his childhood and teenage years in Eliott’s house, in Eliott’s bedroom even, but…

But he’s never done _that_.

He’s never slammed the door after one too many fights and straight-up imposed himself at the Demaurys’, and judging by Eliott’s demeanor ever since he showed up, soaked wet from the rain outside, he knows he feels it too — it’s weird. It’s different. It’s not the usual excitement floating in the air.

“I don’t really feel like watching anything right now,” he confesses, fiddling with the hem of Eliott’s way-too-long tee-shirt. He’s just tired, he’s heard so much yelling today it’s like his ears are ringing.

“Oh, yeah, no, it’s fine,” Eliott says quickly. He pats the spot next to him until Lucas caves and joins him. “I just thought you might… I don’t know, like a distraction.”

“Being here is enough, don’t worry,” he says, maneuvering himself on the mattress before folding his legs against his chest, and honestly, he wishes that were true, he really does.

Because Eliott is Eliott, and he really doesn’t want his friend to feel bad about him any more than he already does — so Lucas does as he usually tries to do. He tries to shove it all as far down as possible, in the smallest corner of his brain, where it doesn’t hurt as much. He tries not to think about the fact that tomorrow is another day, that eventually he will have to come back home, and how much he _doesn’t_ want that. He tries not to think that Eliott’s tee-shirt feels soft against his skin, and that even if it’s the weirdest sleepover they’ve ever had, even if something feels _off_ , he still feels a thousand times better here than he does at home.

Eliott crosses his legs, and leans forward to reach for a pair of earbuds on his nightstand. “How about some music? You can choose whatever you want.”

Lucas’ eyes travel a few times between Eliott’s eyes and the earbud that is offered to him, and he picks up with a small huff. “Alright, okay.”

Eliott makes a small, content sound, like it makes him genuinely happy to spend the night with his grumpy self, listening to songs that aren’t even remotely close to his personal taste — and maybe Lucas goes along with it. Maybe he’s selfish like that, but this one night, he just gets along with it. He lets soft piano music soothe his mood a bit, slowly lulling him into sleep until his head gets too heavy and he has to drag himself to the guest mattress that has been set up for him like so many times before.

Crossing the street to go back home, that too he’s done a million times, but not often with that weird gut-feeling of walking right into a no man’s land. His dad’s car is nowhere to be seen, and the silence is deafening as he pads through the silent house. He shuffles upstairs to change before school, going about his morning routine with a weird tension lodged between his shoulder blades, his head too full of thoughts, and he’s shoving a biology textbook into his backpack when he sees it. It’s a DVD — _Ratatouille_. It’s, embarrassingly enough, one of those movies he could watch over and over again without ever tiring of it, and obviously Eliott knows, _obviously_ , because they’ve watched it so many times since they were kids, and who else would have put it in there?

His mouth twists into half a smile when he picks up the DVD, a bright yellow sticky note on the front of the box. _Everything is always better on Blu-ray, I promise_ _✳_

*

_11- Someone who fucking sticks around and doesn’t leave when things go to shit_

A Blu-ray isn’t enough to make it all better, as it turns out, but Lucas surely appreciates Eliott’s gesture for what it is, and all those that follow later, when his family situation goes from bad to worse to terrible. He’s never made a habit of setting a stupid list of resolutions with every new year, but this time, and this time only, he’s resolved to stop thinking about that fucking new year. At best he’s allowing himself to laugh it off. Divorced parents? Funny as hell. Mom in a psychiatric ward? Hilarious. Family house on sale? _Hysterical_. They’re cruising around the near-empty supermarket, aimlessly going from one aisle to the next as Lucas picks up random stuff to drop them into the cart Eliott is pushing. It’s another Wednesday, it’s lunchtime, and he knows there’s nothing to eat at home, because there’s been no one to go grocery shopping for him.

“So what are you guys planning for tomorrow?”, he asks distractedly.

Just because he’s single doesn’t mean he’s clueless about the ways of those who aren’t — and he knows that tomorrow night is a big deal for Eliott, long before they even take left and stumble onto a sea of sugary pink and velvety red. An aisle has been pushed to the side at the center of the store to clear some more space for Valentine’s Day displays. The racks are filled with chocolates of all kinds and flavors, heart-wearing Teddy Bears, gifts, cards and even plastic flowers, but Eliott doesn’t really seem to pay attention to anything. Which, in itself, isn’t that surprising. He’s been dating Lucille for three months now, ever since they got paired together for some oral presentation at school and that it finally opened her eyes at how wonderful Eliott is, so Lucas doesn’t really expect his best friend to go for the first generic box of chocolates he finds.

“Uh, I don’t know,” Eliott says evasively, following Lucas when he walks past the Valentine’s Day area. “We haven’t talked about it much yet.”

Lucas hums. “It’s your first Valentine’s Day,” he points out distractedly, eyes skimming over various cereal brands, and he ends up reaching for a _Crunch_ box that he drops into the cart, “I’d have expected you to buy balloons and a giant Teddy Bear or something.” _Or simply to show up at Lucille’s window with a boombox_ , he almost adds, but he keeps it in just in time. Eliott doesn’t need any bad idea of that kind. Judging by his musical taste, it’s frankly better for everyone, starting with Lucille’s parents’ neighbors.

He hears Eliott toying with the shopping cart chain. “Luce’s kinda busy. Her parents are on her case with the BAC and all,” he says, and Lucas gives him a look, from his spot at the end of the aisle, that makes Eliott’s eyebrows shoot up innocently. “What?”

“Why are you lying?”, Lucas asks, squinting his eyes a little.

Eliott scoffs, but it comes out wrong — off-key. “I’m not _lying_.”

He’s definitely lying, Lucas thinks bluntly, and he rolls his eyes to himself. His best friend is so painfully transparent that he should probably be grateful about it, he should probably be _happy_ that he’s able to read him like an open book, but instead he hates that Eliott doesn’t seem to have any clue when it comes down to it — it makes it even more annoying whenever he tries to lie to his face. “You are,” he retorts with a pointed stare. “What’s up? I thought you’d be over the moon or something.”

Eliott squirms behind the cart, his hands awkwardly drumming along the handle. “Oh, no I am, truly,” he says quickly, “I just thought we could… I don’t know, maybe go watch a movie or something. You and I.”

 _And there we go_ , Lucas thinks, and it’s like a weight is dropped onto his shoulders, making them slump with an inaudible _woosh_. There’s a pang inside his chest, and it’s not a big one, it’s not a breath-altering one, not those that make you want to curl into a ball and cry, it’s just the kind of sting that reminds you of a sore spot. A bruise still a little tender, a scar still noticeable.

“Are you asking me out, Demaury?” he snickers, trying to deflect the sudden change in the atmosphere, but he already knows it’s useless because he can’t be the only one going for it — they both have to play the same game, and he already knows Eliott isn’t willing to.

“I just think you might want some company,” Eliott says with a nice smile, and although Lucas loves that smile, he really does, this time it just doesn’t work.

“I’m fine,” he replies briskly, and he pulls sharply at the end of the shopping cart to move it forward. It’s a petty gesture that seems to startle Eliott, and he immediately feels bad about it. “Your girlfriend doesn’t need you to worry about me, she needs you to fuss over her.”

“But I-”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

Eventually Eliott nods, muttering a small ‘right’, and Lucas has to pretend he doesn’t want to rush out of here, lunch be damned. He hates it, he hates when Eliott is like this, and hates even more that it’s because of him. They walk through the store for a few more minutes, mostly in silence, only occasionally making a small comment or two about things they see on their way to the cash registers. Eliott starts filling the reusable shopping bags Lucas retrieves from his backpack while he pays a ridiculous amount of money for his purchases, and then they’re off.

“Hey,” Lucas mumbles pitifully as they reach the bus stop at the end of the parking lot. “I… I’m sorry if I was rude. I really appreciate what you do for me, everything, it’s just… I’m just trying to hold it together.” He looks away, tracing a weird line in the concrete from the tip of his shoe to avoid Eliott’s eyes.

“It’s okay, I shouldn’t be pushy,” Eliott says, and there’s the faint trace of a smile in his voice. He leans down to squeeze the shopping bag he’s holding between his feet. “But I want you to know I’m here, okay? I’m not going anywhere, so whenever you feel like talking… I’m here.”

It takes Lucas a few seconds to look up, and there’s something so soft and gentle into Eliott’s expression that it makes something melt into his chest almost instantly. He finds himself mirroring Eliott’s smile, albeit lamely — not quite as beautiful, not quite as warm, not quite as reassuring. He finds himself thinking about what Eliott just said for a while, as they hop into the bus and make their way home one stop after the other. He's not going to accept his offer for Valentine's Day, because if anyone deserves to be taken care of on that special day, it's Eliott's girlfriend. But still. Maybe, someday, he can manage to find someone who just doesn't leave.

*

_15- Someone who feels like home_

It’s a long while before he thinks about the list again — he doesn’t even know where it is, but he guesses moving abroad for a semester tends to do that to you. He’s in his second year of uni when he jumps on the Erasmus offer, and between paperwork and packing up and unpacking and settling down and trying to, maybe, _eventually_ , meet some new people to make the next three months of his life somewhat relevant on a human level, he doesn’t have much time to think about whether or not he’s going to meet the man of his dreams at the next street corner, much less whether or not he checks an inordinate amount of criteria.

Frankly, it’s not that big of a deal. Lucas has never been excessively hopeful about it in the first place, so he can’t really say it’s something that requires a lot of self-discipline. Occasionally Eliott brings it up over text or FaceTime, because he’s an idiot like that, and he’s his best friend, so of course he considers it his double duty to bring up that kind of corny, embarrassing prospect.

“I don’t know, he’s kinda cute in a way,” Lucas says one day, roughly two weeks after landing in Oslo, about some guy he’s met at a party. He’s dutifully sent Eliott his Instagram handle for approval, and for the past few minutes they’ve been going through his publications over FaceTime, like they’re back in Lucas’ old bedroom, with Eliott on his bed and Lucas sitting on the floor.

“He looks fifteen,” Eliott replies unhelpfully, snickering a little. “Didn’t know it was a turn-on of yours. Did that one make the cut?”

“Shut up,” Lucas scoffs, and he regrets not being able to send something in Eliott’s face in retaliation. Besides, he looks barely his age himself, it’s not like he’s in a position to comment about someone else’s appearance — something Eliott promptly dismisses as soon as Lucas points it out, because ‘ _Lucas, don’t expect me to tell you you’re not ridiculously attractive’,_ and he’s vain enough to take the compliment without arguing.

After that, well, he goes back to not thinking about it.

Final terms are rolling around and he crams for it, and before he can even catch a breath, it’s already the end of the semester and Christmas is right at the corner. He lands back in France three days before Christmas Eve, and of course he crashes at Eliott’s, because he hasn’t spoken to his father in nearly four months and a half, so it’s not like he even has options to choose from — but he has to admit, it feels nice, knowing he’s going somewhere he’s wanted. Eliott has been buzzing over it for weeks now, making plans for movie nights and places to go and people to see, so much that Lucas almost forgot to be sad about leaving Oslo.

“I’m so fucking happy to have you back,” Eliott says excitedly, voice a little too loud in the narrow stairwell leading up to his third-floor one-bedroom flat, and he’s so eager that he ends up bumping Lucas’ suitcase a couple of times between the stairs, the wall and the banister.

“Jeez, calm down,” Lucas huffs, “the whole neighborhood doesn’t have to know I’m here, thanks.”

Eliott opens the door of his flat with a nudge from his shoulder, not looking even remotely sorry. “Well, that’s just the beginning if we get a place together,” he singsongs, and Lucas shakes his head a little — but deep down, he loves it. His cheeks are hurting from smiling, and he feels his shoulders relax instantly as soon as he crosses the threshold. Nothing has changed since he left last summer. Not that he expected it to, but it’s always nice. In the small, cramped living room, Eliott has already prepared a pillow and a comforter, carefully folded to the side of the couch, and it’s not even that late (not even 10), and the flight wasn’t even long (not even three hours), but Lucas already feels very compelled into dropping himself there and wrapping himself into the blanket — so he does just that. He quickly nibbles on a leftover sandwich he bought at the airport in Oslo, while Eliott excitedly rambles about some renting options he’s seen here and there, and then he quickly sets up his bed.

His best friend is sweet enough not to make fun of him for it, and when he flips off the light on his way out of the living room with a cheerful ‘ _sweet dreams_ ’, Lucas doesn’t think, for one second, he can love him more than that.

*

“How about this?” Eliott grins triumphantly as he turns the lion plushie he had growing up in his direction. Lucas isn’t sure, but he thinks it might have been supposed to look like Simba, before he proceeded to drag it everywhere with him until the color irrevocably turned a dirty mix of greenish-yellow and grey. “Don’t you miss him?”

Lucas huffs, shaking his head, and he turns back to busy himself with a heavy storage box filled with what looks like bedsheets and drapes of various kinds. “I’m way past needing plushies, thanks,” he snorts, reaching for the plastic lid of the box to replace it in its dusty corner.

They’ve been here for about twenty minutes, in the storage unit where most of his and his mom’s stuff are neatly piled up in, and although he initially thought that this would be easy, because _‘C’mon, it’s just a storage unit, it’s not Versailles in there’,_ turns out there are lots and lots of things to search through. He doesn’t regret bringing Eliott along, to be honest; it takes at least two to make their way around all the stuff, and at least Eliott can reach the upper shelves. At first they had started renting the unit to store his mom’s things away after the divorce, but when Lucas moved to Norway, he couldn’t afford to pay both the student lodging _and_ rent at his old flatshare simultaneously, so he was forced to give up his spot over there and to store his things here in the meantime.

“Have you no heart?” Eliott gasps, and when Lucas turns back, he’s pouting as he gives the plushie a sad look. “We’re definitely watching Toy Story tonight.”

Lucas rolls his eyes fondly with a scoff, and eventually, after another moment of staring, Eliott agrees to put the lion back into whatever cardboard or plastic box he found it and to move the fuck on. In the meantime, Lucas moves over to another stash of smaller plastic boxes, still looking for the clothes he left behind before Oslo, but it’s not long before Eliott makes another sound, that has Lucas’ head whipping around.

“Hey, remember this game?” he asks, grinning as he waves a version of _Risk_. “God I miss that old peasant woman who told us off whenever we would be beating up people.”

“Dark Eliott was really a formative experience, but don’t ever end up on the wrong side of the tracks, thanks,” Lucas snickers in his corner, taking the lid off one of the boxes before he starts rummaging through its content. There’s a bit of everything in there, from old assignments to a snapback, pictures, a couple of textbooks, and as he keeps digging through it all, Eliott huffs something he doesn’t quite catch.

It’s during that overall quiet and regular afternoon that the list makes its comeback into Lucas’ life, after months of barely giving it a thought, and maybe at least a year of not adding another entry; it slips out from an old _Annabac_ textbook when he picks it up from the box. The fold is a little wrong and the corner slightly crumpled, and for a second he contemplates just shoving it back at the bottom box, because he’s really not in the mood to entertain that kind of ridiculously hopeful thoughts for a better future or whatever, but in the end there’s a weird kind of curiosity that pushes him to open it.

 _Just a quick look_ , he thinks, discreetly peering above his shoulder to find Eliott busy in the opposite corner. The list has a total of 54 entries, ranking from thoughtful to shallow to frankly depressing at times. A wry smile shows up on his lips at entry #4: _he gotta be tall because I’m not spending my life climbing ladders to change light bulbs._ Or even better, the entry #9: _someone who makes me laugh so hard I cry_ — it has something terribly soft to it, almost… pure.

The entry #29 is entirely Eliott’s fault, he knows it right off the bat: _not too many tattoos thanks_. It’s crossed, because shortly afterwards Eliott got his first tattoo for some obscure reason, and despite Lucas’ adamant protests, his best friend insisted that he accompanied him to the parlor for the big day — and then he got another tattoo, and another, and after some time Lucas was forced to realize that… okay maybe tattoos were okay. 

The rest of the entries are sometimes awfully precise (#34 ‘ _light eyes????? Fuck yes?????’_ and #41 ‘ _abs. abs. abs.’_ ), or completely vague (#29 _Fucking consistent_ ). And then there’s entry #50. One of the last entries, that he probably wrote towards the end of high school or during his first year of uni, during a lonely evening at the flatshare — a very graphic description of what he’d want his imaginary boyfriend to do to him, which he had written after watching some porn locked up in his bedroom.

“What are you doing?”

Eliott’s voice sounds so close that Lucas startles guiltily, snapping the list down against his chest in the textbook definition of caught red-handed. Eliott’s eyebrows shoot up as they make eye-contact, and Lucas tries to ignore the way his cheeks heat up. “I- uh- nothing,” he croaks out. “Just going through old stuff.”

There’s a glint in Eliott’s eyes, like he knows, like he can read through his fucking mind — like he too just read that entry #50. _Stop fucking spiraling, he doesn’t know shit_ , he admonishes himself. The only thing he knows is that Lucas is acting like a teenager caught looking at porn.

“What?”, he asks, trying to find back his composure.

Eliott shrugs, with that annoying little smirk on his ridiculously pretty face. “Nothing,” he says, voice drawling a little, but he’s motioning next to Lucas to busy himself with the upper shelves in Lucas’ direct vicinity, and he knows his best friend is being annoying on purpose.

Lucas squints at him from the corner of his eyes. Seemingly unbothered, Eliott stands onto his tiptoes, arms extended at their maximum capacity to reach for a big, dusty cardboard box almost touching the ceiling, and his tee-shirt is riding high and showing the smallest trace of his rib tattoo curling down his side, and that’s when it creeps onto Lucas, at the worst, most inopportune moment. His eyes travel back and forth between Eliott and the list a couple of times, and despite his best efforts to keep calm, Lucas’ stomach starts doing a weird somersault. 

_Oh no._

*

Here is the thing.

When he started making that list, he was never planning on his best friend checking pretty much all the boxes right off the bat. That couldn’t have been farther away from what he had in mind, he’s pretty fucking sure of it. And yet here he is. He’s slipped the list into the front pocket of his hoodie before they left the storage unit, and then he took it out to shove it in his laptop bag, where he’s pretty sure no one will find it. It’s not that he’s afraid Eliott would be weirded out about it, it’s just… It’s a lot. Because it’s one thing to be aware that your best friend is insanely attractive, and it’s another one to think that maybe, just maybe, you wouldn’t mind being the one he kisses, the one he pulls by the waist at night, and the one who makes him feel good in bed.

The irony of the calendar (and his life, really), makes it that the next few days are just a whirlwind of _Eliott Eliott Eliott_ , and by the time Christmas rolls around, Lucas is ready to die. Not because he doesn’t want his best friend anywhere near, but because he would very, very much appreciate if his brain could just fucking _stop_ bringing up that wishlist every fucking five minutes — every single time he so much as glances or thinks about Eliott. Which tends to be problematic when he’s literally living with him at the moment. All of a sudden it’s like he’s hyper-aware of all the times Eliott smiles at him, reaches out to ruffle his hair in the morning, or has a nice gesture of any kind. It’s like he feels somewhat guilty for every laughter they share, and when they go do some last-minute Christmas shopping, Lucas walks around on automatic pilot for the better part of the afternoon, after inadvertently catching sight of Eliott’s arm flung around his shoulders in a mirror.

The only upside of having a dysfunctional family is that for at least 24h it takes Lucas’ mind off Eliott and that weird-ass situation his fifteen-year-old self put him in the first place. He spends Christmas Eve with his father and his new wife in a restaurant, and if one can’t be caught dead trying anything to make his son feel at ease, the other is trying so fucking hard it makes Lucas wants to throw himself in the traffic on the way to pick up his mom at her subway stop. Because yes, his stepmother insisted that he brings his mother, and Lucas was chicken enough to accept, just so that he wouldn’t have to sit through the whole dinner with his father and his weirdly enthusiastic second wife.

The whole dinner is as awkward as it can possibly be, but then Lucas comes back to Eliott’s place, early enough that his best friend is still at his grandparents’, and he tries to make sense of the feeling of relief he feels when he drops himself on the couch, only to see Eliott’s sketchbook on the coffee table, and Eliott’s hoodie thrown carelessly on the armrest, and Eliott’s drawings pinned up on the walls, and the piano pushed in the corner. It used to be in Eliott’s bedroom back at his parents’, and they would mess around trying to get the Star Wars theme right with four hands on the keyboard.

None of these things feel new — but all the hyper-awareness is weird enough to make him want to scream and hits his head repeatedly with the flat of his hand. And the worst part is that it keeps going on like this. Spending Christmas day at the Demaurys’ shouldn’t feel so weird either, and yet. He’s always been Eliott’s platonic plus one at every single one of his family birthday dinner, so he knows everyone and everything about this family. He knows that one of Eliott’s uncles and his godfather will inevitably end up on different sides of an argument about politics, that Eliott’s dad will probably try to lighten the mood, that Eliott’s younger cousins will pout for a fair share of lunch or dinner except when they’ll venture on TikTok halfway through, that Eliott’s grandmother will make a passive-aggressive comment or two about the food that his mother will try to ignore, and at some point, as always, she’ll go to the kitchen, and make a weird face only for Lucas to see, and that he’ll have to bite the inside of his cheek not to laugh — he knows all of that, because he’s been around for fifteen years.

But still it _does_ feel weird. A little bit. And not just because he’s never spent a Christmas dinner with them. It feels weird, because it downs on him that Eliott is single, and that he’s single too, and that although Eliott’s mother welcomes him as soon as Eliott walks him and asks if they can add a plate, when they take off their coats, Lucas catches a silent conversation between her and her husband that results into Eliott’s dad shrugging. Did they ever think they were more than friends? Did they ever think Lucas was more than just the kid from across the street with a fucked-up family? Because he himself never did, but now it’s all he can think about. And if he had been a girl, or if Eliott had been a girl, if they had been in a boy/girl kind of friendship, he knows that at some point the Demaurys would have asked for ground rules, no matter how ridiculous it would have felt for them. No closed doors in the afternoon, no sleepovers in the same room, and with every birthday dinner or birthday lunch, people would have just assumed they were a particularly chill couple who refrained on PDA.

So that’s how he spends his Christmas lunch, alongside the Demaury family. He laughs at the jokes thrown around, at the same family memories he’s heard a bunch of times already, rolls his eyes at the political arguments on the other end of the table, and spends entirely too much time pondering the ins and outs of heteronormativity and the way it may or may not have shaped his relationship to his best friend.

“You okay?”, Eliott asks at some point on his way back from the kitchen, squeezing his shoulders lightly, and Lucas has to crane his neck all the way up to make eye-contact because his best friend is standing behind him.

“Yeah, I’m all good,” he says with a smile, and when Eliott goes to sit back at the table, Lucas tries his best to ignore another look he catches between Eliott’s parents.

*

“Can I ask you something?” Eliott asks from his spot against the stove, hands tightly wrapped around his mug while Lucas pours himself his second coffee of the day.

It’s officially the last week of the year, and to Lucas’ great dismay, he’s not particularly sure that any of his internal questioning sessions will die at midnight on New Year Eve. To make matters even worse, he doesn’t feel like he’s slept one bit, and although he initially tried to conceal it at best as he could, he guesses he’s making a poor job considering Eliott joined him for breakfast roughly three minutes ago and is already picking up on the signs.

“Yeah, sure,” Lucas says, trying to sound relaxed, nose in his mug to avoid looking Eliott in the eyes.

“You would tell me if you didn’t want us to move in together, right?” Eliott enquires after a moment. “I mean, it’s not the first time I get an idea and I run away with it and you’re…”

“No, no, I still want to,” Lucas interrupts, and he hopes his voice doesn’t sound as weird and scratchy as it feels in his throat. Because he does. He genuinely still does want to go through with it, because no matter how fucked up his brain is making things for him lately, Eliott is still the closest from _home_ he’s ever felt.

Eliott hums. “Oh, okay,” his voice trails off, sounding hesitant, “I mean I was afraid you might have changed your mind and didn’t know how to tell me.”

Lucas laughs, but deep down he wants to slap himself because it sounds like chalk screeching on a blackboard in the silent kitchen corner. _God you’re so fake_. “I don’t know where you got this idea, I’m still 1000% in.”

Eliott looks sheepish, chewing onto his bottom lip uncomfortably. “Look, I know… I mean you’ve been kind of quiet lately, and I know sometimes you get lost in your head a bit. I don’t want you to think you can’t, like, talk to me or anything.”

Lucas’ grip tightens around his mug. He doesn’t deserve Eliott. No one does, but especially not him. “I’m fine it’s just… You know, Christmas mood isn’t my strong suit,” he mumbles, eyes falling. “Plus, going through all that stuff the other day… It brings up some memories.”

After all, it’s not a lie. It did bring up a lot of feelings and thoughts, and although they aren’t all that unpleasant, it’s surprisingly difficult to maintain eye-contact with your best friend when you spent most of the past few days trying _not_ to picture his mouth on you.

“I’m sorry,” Eliott says, sounding so absolutely genuine that Lucas wants to smash something — preferably his head against the kitchen sink. “Of course I don’t know how you feel but, you’re not going through it alone, right? I’m here for you. Always have and always will.”

Lucas swears he could cry. He _can’t_ possibly keep it to himself. Not when Eliott is his best friend, not when they’re just about to start looking for a place to live together, not when the longest Lucas has tried to hide a secret from him was exactly ten hours. “You’re checking a bunch of boxes,” Lucas confesses with a long sigh, eyes falling shut for a second.

A weird kind of silence settles in the kitchen, tension lodging between Lucas’ shoulders.

“What are you talking about?”, Eliott asks after a moment.

“The boyfriend list,” Lucas mumbles, shaking his head to himself. “Or wishlist or whatever. It’s fucking dumb, I know, and I never realized that before, but the other day I found that stupid list again in my stuff at the storage unit, and now I don’t know what to do with it, or what to think.”

If anyone needs a guide on how to ruin a lifelong friendship, Lucas Lallemant is your reference, he thinks humorlessly. But it’s Eliott. So maybe it’s not that bad, right? It doesn’t have to be a big deal. And okay, maybe he _is_ making a big deal out of it, maybe he wouldn’t have to be afraid about Eliott’s reaction if he wasn’t the one making it sound like-

“And you feel like… it’s a problem?” Eliott asks carefully, as if he had followed his train of thoughts.

Lucas sneers, finally turning around to meet Eliott’s eyes. “Well, you tell me. I’m shaping my imaginary boyfriend after my childhood best friend, what does it say about me?” He’s pretty positive it’s not the sign of someone with a perfectly balanced life.

“That you have great taste,” Eliott grins, but it kind of turns into a wince when Lucas lets out a groan. “Hey, it doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want to, alright? I’m nothing extraordinary, I’m sure plenty of guys check those boxes.”

“But…?”, Lucas prompts, because it feels a lot like Eliott isn’t done but he’s really close to tell him that pausing for dramatic effect right now is definitely not the nice thing to do.

Eliott’s hands are still gripping tight his coffee mug. “But nothing. Like I said,” Eliott adds, clearing his throat a little, “it doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to.”

Suddenly it hits Lucas that he sounds _fucking nervous,_ like, _actually_ nervous. Why is he nervous? _Oh right_. He just made things weird. “Why? Do _you_ want it to mean something?”, he asks, hoping to go for a casual laugh, but it comes out wrong, off-key.

“Well… I started making a list too, a couple of years ago,” Eliott says, before pausing. His mouth twists a little. “And it’s… uh, it’s possible you’re checking a bunch of boxes as well.”

 _Well that’s just getting better and better_ , Lucas almost says. It’s Eliott’s turn to avoid his eyes and Lucas isn’t sure what’s going on but he’s pretty positive he doesn’t like it, because now things aren’t just weird on his part anymore, and he has no idea what to do with that piece of information.

Eventually, because he’s like that, Lucas snorts — it’s just too much. “Look, I appreciate it if you’re trying to make me feel better but-”

Eliott looks offended. “I’m not,” he says, sounding earnest, and Lucas’ words die in his throat. “Okay, you know what? Come with me.” He puts his mug down onto the kitchen elements, and Lucas doesn’t even have the time to say anything before Eliott motions to leave the kitchen, dragging him along in his wake. His own coffee mug still in his hands, he stares in confusion as they walk into the living room, his best friend going to retrieve one of his sketchbooks from the tiny coffee table.

The next few seconds are particularly silent as Eliott flicks through the pages, but he eventually exhumes a loose leaf from the depths of the sketchbook. What strikes Lucas first is that there’s a lot of black ink on it. Lines, sometimes full-on paragraphs have been crossed with a thick black marker, which offers a stark contrast with Eliott’s rather small but clean handwriting.

“See? I’m not lying,” he says, and he seems to hesitate for a split second, before he hands it to Lucas. “You can read it, if you want.”

 _No that’s personal_ , is the first thing that comes to his mind. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the kind of thing he would want people to think about his very own stuff — that it’s off-limit, that peeking is rude, that it’s intrusive. He knows he’s an adult, he knows that, and Eliott is an adult too, and even more so they literally _grew_ _up_ _together, t_ hey figured shit out together, so it’s not like Eliott would bat an eye if he ever read anything about Lucas’ _slightly_ graphic descriptions, no.

But would he die on the spot from the sheer embarrassment? Probably.

And yet — when Eliott holds his list, he picks it up. He’s a hypocrite like that.

“Boy there's a lot of marker,” he says dumbly, cocking an eyebrow, but deep down all he can think about is that he’s holding that stupid list Eliott wrote, about the things he wants in a partner, and he hates, he _hates_ that there’s some kind of weird hope fluttering deep inside him.

His eyes skim over the entries, more avidly than he’d like to admit. Naturally, Eliott my-head-in-the-cloud Demaury cannot go straight to the point, so it’s not surprising that each entry turns out to be at least a full sentence long.

_3- They don’t mind a good challenge and won’t pass on an occasion to try out new things even if that means stepping out of their comfort zone._

_8- They understand that mental health isn’t smiling all the time._

_14- They’re straight-forward enough to say when things aren’t fine and don’t dismiss it with a shrug._

“Okay but that could be anyone, Eliott,” Lucas says flatly, turning the page over, and he tries his best not to feel disappointed because it’s not _like he has the right to be_. “And I’m sorry but I think the last time someone called me ‘optimistic’ was, like, in kindergarten, and it was about another Lucas.”

“Well that’s the thing,” Eliott argues with a small shrug, and he buries his hands in his pockets. “To me it’s kind of… you. And I know it’s confusing because well, I was there too, but I feel like… I don’t know, the point of making a list like that in the first place is to figure out what matters and what we want, no?”

Lucas’ hand tightens around his mug. “I mean, yes,” he admits, voice dragging slowly on the last word. _But does that mean you want me?_ He can’t get the words out, it’s like his mouth is full of gravel. Another reason why Eliott’s list can’t possibly be about him, he’s far, very, very far from being brave. Or even ‘quick-witted’ for that matter — he only has biting come-backs that would also get him beaten up in middle school. “But between knowing what makes you comfortable and knowing that you want to know your best friend in the biblical sense, there’s an ocean,” Lucas points out, a bit more dryly than intended.

Eliott’s cocks an eyebrow. “In the biblical sense,” he repeats, laughter not far behind as he perches himself onto the armrest of the couch, and just because of that, because of the subtle way Eliott’s voice changes, because Lucas knows he’s biting back a laugh — it’s because of these small things that the tension lifts a little, and that the atmosphere shifts to something more bearable.

“You know what I mean,” Lucas huffs.

Eliott grins, that kind of annoying grin that made Lucas smack his face with textbooks back in the days. “Oh, yeah, I do, don’t worry about that.”

Lucas rolls his eyes, eventually glancing back to Eliott’s list — but it’s like the words don’t print themselves in his brain, like he can’t comprehend those simple sentences written in Eliott’s oh-so-clean handwriting. “You haven’t told me what all that marker was about,” he croaks out after a moment of silence.

“And how about you tell me how you actually feel about this?”, Eliott asks gently. He rises up from the couch, stepping closer, and Lucas finally finds the courage to look up long enough to hand him back his list.

“I think that you deserve to find someone more than anyone else in the world,” Lucas says, voice getting a bit quiet as he grabs tightly his cold coffee mug with both hands. “But I don’t know if that someone could be me. I never thought… I mean it’s only been a couple of days, before that I never thought of us like that.”

“But you did in the end,” Eliott points out.

It gets Lucas’ brain to work, the wheels turning even faster — because Eliott’s right. He didn’t come to think of being romantically involved with Eliott because Eliott showed him his list, he got there all by himself. And the problem isn’t that Eliott is repulsing, it’s not that the thought of kissing him and going on dates with him is weird, it’s not that falling asleep next to Eliott is grossing him out. The problem is-

“I think I just don’t want to risk losing you,” Lucas admits in a whisper, eyes falling. He’s never been in an actual relationship. His list of exes should be requalified as, at best, weeks-long flings, and he does not particularly think he’ll be a natural at this, courtesy to his parents displaying the opposite of a healthy relationship for most of his life — the last thing he wants is to hurt Eliott in the process of trying and failing.

He only looks up when Eliott’s hands cover his own around the coffee mug. “I know. And I know no amount of promises on my part will make it better, but if you need me to I’ll repeat it every single day.” His thumb gently caresses the back of Lucas’ hand. “I’ll be there as long as you want me to. And if you don’t want me like that, then it’s fine too. I’ll still be there no matter what.”

Lucas takes a deeper inhale. “Why are you so calm about all of this? How long have you been sitting on that shit to be so chill now?”

Eliott looks sheepish. “Two, three years maybe.” Lucas’ mouth falls open, but Eliott quickly adds: “I mean, it’s not that I was like, just fantasizing about you for like three years straight, it’s just that, like, I always thought you were always the one that…” His voice trails off and he huffs a laugh. “See why I didn’t say anything before? It’s just… it’s so hard to explain.”

“Yeah,” Lucas snorts, chewing onto his bottom lip. “Tell me about it.”

But deep down he’s starting to understand what Eliott means. It’s hard to put into words every little thing that makes Eliott the person he needs most. Something not even a list of a thousand entries can do. And maybe that’s why it feels so alien that, to Eliott, he’s the perfect match to his wishlist. _To me it is you_ , Eliott had said before, and now he gets it. He gets it because Eliott’s hands are around his own, he gets it because Eliott would probably be willing to tattoo ‘I will not leave you alone’ somewhere on his arm if Lucas asked. He gets it because Eliott has been sitting on his own feelings for three years, and still he helped him out pick up guys, sort out his life, encouraged him to leave for a whole different country, and he was only brave enough to go through any of it because Eliott made him feel like he was capable of doing so.

“My list is a mess,” Lucas confesses. “And I should probably cover a thing or two before you see it because that’s, like, not appropriate for a first table read. But if you want to read it… Then you can read it. And then you can decide if you think you can put up with me more than you already do.”

Eliott’s smile is soft and blinding at the same time. He takes one of his hands off Lucas’, and when he pulls him closer by the neck, Lucas still feels weird about it, but not in a bad way; there’s just something churning in his stomach that wasn’t there not so long ago. He just leans into the touch as Eliott’s lips press onto his cheek, because Eliott smells good, and it makes him feel warm and protected in a way no one else ever made him feel.

“I’ll be honest,” Eliott says quietly, not pulling much away, “that’s why there’s so much marker on mine.”

This time Lucas feels warm for a whole different reason. He feels the tip of his ears heating up a little bit, and he’s positive it doesn’t have to do with Eliott’s immediate vicinity. “Well,” he says, clearing his throat a little bit, “that’s… something to think about.”

“One step at a time though.”

Lucas finds himself smiling, mirroring Eliott’s expression, his eyes trailing a second too long on Eliott’s lips. “Yeah. One step at a time.”

**Author's Note:**

> spoiler alert, they do move out, but they only need one bedroom
> 
> Thanks for reading ❤️


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